Arbuckle's role comes full circle

Tuesday

Jul 18, 2006 at 12:01 AM

DALJIT KALSI Staff Writer

In the 1980s, Sean Arbuckle was just another student at Spartanburg High School. Today, he's a star of the stage, performing regularly in Canada's Stratford Festival, one of the world's largest classical repertory theaters.

He's been on TV, too. If you watch ABC's TGIF lineup, you may have seen Arbuckle on an episode of "Hope & Faith" that aired in April. In the episode, Arbuckle plays Gary, the administrator of a retirement home that Kelly Ripa's character moves to, thinking it was a singles apartment complex.

One of Arbuckle's lines on the show, "What a lively addition you'll make ... to Rancho Viejo ... the retirement community that's one step short of heaven" -- directed at Kelly Ripa's character -- was listed in IMDB.com's list of memorable quotes from the series.

Arbuckle also has played a doctor and a medical examiner in episodes of "Law & Order" and "Law & Order: Special Victim's Unit," and he sold shoes to Sarah Jessica Parker in the first season of "Sex and the City."

"As a teenager, I loved being on stage," Arbuckle said. "I acted in plays with the Spartanburg Youth Theatre and in every high school play I could."

"Most of the kids (acting at the Youth Theatre) just learn lines and spout back the lines during the performance, but Sean thought on his own," said Mary Nicholson, managing director of the Spartanburg Youth Theatre. "With most kids, we have to try to teach them about characterization and try to force them to put themselves aside and take on their characters, but not Sean. I could tell he had a real interest in acting. Sometimes he came up with some interesting side notes for his character that even I hadn't thought of."

Through junior high and high school, Arbuckle had plans to continue his education at Princeton University and become a lawyer. But, after graduating from Spartan High, Arbuckle went to Duke University as a drama major.

"I already loved acting, and at Duke, I began studying the craft of the art," Arbuckle said. "The professors there really pushed graduate school and were really devoted to getting students ready for an acting career."

After his tenure at Duke, Arbuckle began graduate studies in drama at New York's acclaimed Juilliard School, one of the world's premier performing arts academies. Arbuckle settled in New York after completing his studies at Juilliard, ready to begin the uncertain life of an actor.

Despite hard bouts between acting jobs at the beginning of his career, Arbuckle didn't give up on his dream, and he drew from his childhood in Spartanburg to help him develop his own acting style.

"When I started out in New York, I found out that people have an image of the South that was far different than the one I had growing up," Arbuckle said. "It's far too easy to stereotype someone, whether he or she is a character in a play or a real person, and seeing that made me look deeper into the characters I play. I try not to make judgments about them based on where they're from or anything like that. I try to break into the characters' cores and find out what really makes them who they are."

Arbuckle says becoming a part of Stratford's acting company was a stroke of luck. The elite troupe of performers stationed in Ontario, Canada, rarely recruits from New York's talent pool.

"Stratford usually casts only Canadian actors or young actors from Chicago," he said. "However, the director of Stratford's production of 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf' was from New York and wanted to hold auditions in New York."

Arbuckle auditioned and won the role of the young professor, Nick, in the play. Since then, Arbuckle has been a featured actor in every season of the Stratford Festival.

"I spend about nine months out of the year here in Canada, performing at least once a day about six times a week," Arbuckle said. "When the season is over, I'm always exhausted, and I return to New York during the winter."

His family in Spartanburg is excited about his career choice.

"I'm so happy to see Sean doing what he loves, and doing it so well," said his mother, Anne, an English teacher at Spartanburg High School and Spartanburg Technical College. "I know I'm biased, but seeing how well he does his job, and knowing how much it means to him, and how much he puts into it really makes me proud. There's a lot more to a stage performance than learning lines, and Sean gives every performance his all."

Anne recently returned to Spartanburg from the Stratford Festival. She travels to Ontario every year to watch her son perform.

Arbuckle currently is in two Stratford Festival plays -- as the Earl of Worcester Thomas Percy in William Shakespeare's "Henry IV: Part One," and as Richard Dazzle in "London Assurance," a Victorian-era comedy.